Bozell & Graham: CNN’S love letter to ‘RBG’

If CNN really wanted to brand itself as a “Facts First” news channel, why did it promise to air a gushy documentary about fiercely feminist Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Labor Day weekend? In case you didn’t know, this film is actually a production by “CNN Films,” founded in 2012 to offer “distinguished, thought-provoking documentary programming to audiences on CNN’s platforms around the world.”

CNN’s film “RBG” first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, where the media fawned all over it, and her. Entertainment Weekly oozed: “Forget movie stars. The hottest celebrity at the Sundance Film Festival this weekend was Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” Ginsburg’s apparently iconic line is “All I ask of my brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.”

That’s an interesting line for the abortion-on-demand feminists.

Ginsburg appeared at the festival for an interview with none other than NPR Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg, who is Ginsburg’s unofficial publicist at laudatory public events like this. Totenberg also gushes over her in the documentary, saying, “She’s become such an icon.” And in one interview, she said, “Ruth Bader Ginsburg did change the way the world is for American women.”

The film’s graphic carries the words “Hero. Icon. Dissenter.” Couldn’t the very same thing be said of former Justice Antonin Scalia? Or Justice Clarence Thomas? Not in a million years. It was Totenberg who tried to ruin Thomas with unproven sexual harassment charges.

Then CNN put “RBG” in the cinemas, and it grossed $13.9 million in #Resistance tickets, according to Box Office Mojo. Liberal newspapers called it a box-office “winner” almost immediately. In early May, Washington Post chief film critic Ann Hornaday gushed under this headline: “And the Summer Box Office’s Big Winner Is … Ruth Bader Ginsburg?” It grossed $560,000 in its first weekend. That’s not exactly an “Avengers” opening, but what the hell.

In late August, USA Today film writer Bryan Alexander sized up the season’s cinematic winners and losers and proclaimed that the “best new superhero duo” of the summer movie season is Ginsburg and Mister Rogers. (A Rogers documentary, promoted by the liberals as a salve for Trump’s tweets, grossed almost $22 million.)

Hollywood has also gotten into the act this year with insipid television tributes. In March, the ABC sitcom “Splitting Up Together” offered a plot about a doctor who told a divorced mother that her teenage boy should be encouraged to masturbate without shame, so she creates a “masturbation nook” for him with a picture of — we kid you not — Justice Ginsburg.

In April, the Fox sitcom “New Girl” wackily celebrated a “feminist icons” birthday party theme for a 3-year-old girl named Ruth, named after … Justice Ginsburg. The kiddies celebrate with pictures of Ginsburg, Eleanor Roosevelt, Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Just six days later, the CBS sitcom “Man with a Plan” featured a mom pushing on her little girl a Barbie doll that’s … Justice Ginsburg, because “She just has more important things to do than fix her hair.” The daughter asks, “Where are her sparkles?” Mommy replies: “On her brain. Yeah. Ruth here has done a lot of important work for our country.”

So it’s not just CNN that feels compelled to roll up a block of marble to place under Justice Ginsburg. Next up is a more fictional movie “based on real events” titled “On the Basis of Sex” with “Star Wars” actress Felicity Jones playing young leftist Ginsburg. It’s being distributed by Focus Features and owned by NBCUniversal. It’s the latest bucket of evidence that the liberal media march in lockstep, both in “news” and entertainment.

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Author: L. Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham

L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.